“Actor-director Robert Redford used his opening address at the Sundance film festival last night to add to the pressure on Hollywood to rein in its depiction of gun violence in the wake of the Newtown school massacre,” the London Guardian reported in January.

For how many decades of your life do you have to be the person you were in your twenties? Small-town lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford) wonders that when he hears the news that Susan Solarz (Susan Sarandon), a long-ago member of the Weather Underground who has lived incognito as a quiet housewife and mother, had been arrested and charged with murder for her radical activities in the ’70s. For Jim, the question is not academic. Under his real name, Nick Sloan, he had been one of Solarz’s comrades in the bombings of government buildings at exactly that period when political idealism soured into potentially lethal criminality.

This film sounds like the bomb!*

Time’s review adds, “The Company You Keep is streaked with melancholy: a disappointment that the second American Revolution never came…” I wonder if Time realizes the implications of those words, even as employees of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO continuously attack those Americans who would seek to defend themselves if it ever did.

Fortunately, to borrow a phrase used by one of Ayers’ acquaintances, Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity rhetorically punch back twice as hard at Redford’s moral equivalency; watch the video at The Right Scoop.

Over twenty years after Running on Empty came out and more than ten years after Bill Ayers told The New York Times (in its 9/11/01 morning edition, no less) that he regretted not setting more bombs, Robert Redford’s next movie sees him playing “a fugitive Weather Underground radical who has been in hiding for 30 years.”

I suppose it makes for a nice change from Weather Underground radicals who teach at major universities and hang out with the president.

No doubt when the film, called The Company You Keep, tanks at the box office, Redford will issue a condescending statement bemoaning the ignorance of America’s moviegoing public. Thank God he doesn’t have to rely on us plebes, though. The 2012 Sundance Festival has just wrapped up, but it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which movie will top next year’s roster.

I wonder if the gap between when it was originally filmed, when it was previewed at Sundance and its opening in American theaters means that a lot of editing has been going on in an effort to salvage the film. That could also explain its relatively low rating at IMDB — 6.3 on a scale of one to ten — and IMDB readers definitely tend to grade on a curve — as of the time of this post.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first Hollywood film that’s a paean to the Weathermen; 1988′s Running on Empty was directed by the late Sidney Lumet and starred otherwise good guy actor Judd Hirsch in the Ayers-inspired role of a former terrorist on the lam.

* To paraphrase the late Andrew Breitbart’s remarks in response to the dinner that Ayers himself served him, after the Daily Caller pledged the most in a fundraiser to win a surreal dinner date with Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn early last year.

Behold, the bombastic, self-righteous hollywood elitist, riding a limousine to their self-appointed holy place on the hill.

Jeezis, Redford, what is WITH people like you? Have you been playing fantasy roles for so long in your life that you have now utterly failed to be capable of recognizing reality? What the hell is the matter with you?

A melancholy expose' to place subtle hints of nostalgia to the notion of destroying things and killing people?

When you first became an actor and made it to the big screen, I'll bet you thought that was enough. But as the years have passed and you constantly watch to see if your candle might go out, you have to repeatedly re-invent yourself to impress...well....who, exactly?

I liked your movies, starting with "The Sting" and "The Great Waldo Pepper" and "The Natural". Three great films that should be enough for anyone with aspirations to be recognized as a great actor. Yet, that's not enough, is it?

Your ego has now taken over and you think you know how life SHOULD be, rather than recognizing how life really IS. But you are an ACTOR. You get paid to pretend you're someone else; Someone who is an alteration of yourself; A fake, a phony, a fabrication, and even an "interpretation".

Siding with such people as Ayers makes me want to destroy every movie of yours that I own. So who are you trying to impress now? At least half the country thinks of you as a typical liberal twit and generally not very bright.

Jasus jumpin' H Christ, Deadford has been at the goddamned botox!He looks like a 70 year old hooker at the Democratic National Convention.Or Nancy Pelosi. Either way, now I have to go wash my eyes out with draino...

Redford's such a total hyprocrite ... like most of the big time environmental-types. Has anyone looked at his catalog? (mostly women's clothing, accessories, & home 'fashion') I'll admit there are some good-looking things in it, & the prices are outrageous -- but best of all is that a good 60%+ of them are "dry clean only". Any idea how UNfriendly that is? (what w/all those chemicals, etc.) Also, I've heard terrible things about gold & silver mining. ALL his 'precious' metals for jewelry are one or t'other, or both. What about the mining of gems? How's that good for the planet? And frankly most of his catalog's jewelry is 'gold-plated' sterling silver, for which they charge like 5X more than almost identical items in other places (for the favor of using his name). Patooie! (spitting the bad taste outta my mouth)

I'm not against nice clothes, cute leather boots/handbags, or even pricey jewelry -- but kindly don't try to sell me this stuff with one hand, while tsk-tsking at me with the other! (for doing/buying the SAME D@MN thing *you* are)

I read a bio on Redford. His politics is a strange mixed bag, if you believe the author...and it had the ring of truth to it.

One of his strongest influences throughout his life was a very conservative, Republican relative. (who has since passed away).

However, he has...and has always had...very leftist influences as well. The bio depicts him as a very hard headed, stubborn, often difficult person...who marches to his own drum.

In his youth, he and a pal had a bit of a rebel streak and would go around California stirring up a little dust, raising hell.

So, the execrable Ayers may indeed strike a chord with Redford. He has a dark side, it seems from the book and he likes dark characters who have dark corners.

Since I despise Ayers and everything he stands for...I hope the picture is a complete disaster. Trying to kill young soldiers and their innocent dates at Ft. Dix...is not something that anyone should "forgive". It lacks humanity.

Doing a movie about this cretin or his wife is beneath contempt. There is no honor in it.

That's the trouble with being human. We're social animals. That means we get to inflict our personalities on each other. Democracy tries to make it somewhat fair, but in our case it fails. Alpha monkeys always get to inflict their personalities on the rest of the troop. Redford is an Alpha monkey.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Redford (and Ayers and Obama and Dohrn and Holder, et. al.) do what they do because they are who they are. It's exactly like a kingdom or an empire: If the emperor is a nice man, everything's fine; if he's a brutal maniac, everything's not so fine.

In our country, I think leadership positions and Alpha-monkey-ness in general attracts damaged people. Not Hannibal Lecter damaged, just people who a) want to control everything and b) cannot see themselves in an honest and objective way.

The control aspect is perfectly evident today. Too many nannies in the nursery.

The self-blindness is evident, too. How often do politicians, actors, Alpha-monkeys in general, say and do things that sound completely horrible, clueless, ignorant, stupid, or self-contradictory? Every other day. Yet they don't seem to see or understand what it means. They go on, day after day, continuing to think well of themselves and giving themselves permission to run everyone else's life.

I think it's important to remember that these people are insane. Maybe no more insane than your or I. But next time you ride the subway or the bus or drive to work, and you notice how many a-holes and weirdos and hopeless cases and dopes there are, remember that the Alphas are the same bunch of people - they just have more money or more ambition or je ne sais quoi.

I have a big dilemma on The Company you Keep. This is normally the kind of leftist movie I would avoid like the plague. But I love Jackie Evancho dearly, and Redford was smart enough to give her a part in the movie. I might end up seeing it anyway, just to see her in it.

Speaking of hypocrites, Bobby is a big time save the planet environmentalist who just happens to own a ski resort. Bobby, I humbly suggest you shut down the ski resort and give the land back to Mother Nature. I will be waiting with bated breath for you to show us peasants that you are truly one who cares about our planet.

Actually, the Guardian was known as the Manchester Guardian for a very long time. I don't think it has ever been known as the London Guardian. Nowadays, it just seems to "The Guardian" with any city name omitted.

Hard to believe that this is the man who made "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Sting," and "The Milgra Bean Field War." Unfortunately in the world of work and education and sometimes even the Church, it is people like me who "Iave to live in the shadow..." The new underground is the old mainstream. It's the Redfords of this world that will bring back "priest holes" and Catholic chapels hidden behind false walls.

Hard to believe the man could have made "Jeremiah Johnson" and then did what he did to the wilderness he chose to live in. Not a lot of back-to-nature going on these days. I'm not sure he even understands the movies he makes.

Behold, the bombastic, self-righteous hollywood elitist, riding a limousine to their self-appointed holy place on the hill.

Jeezis, Redford, what is WITH people like you? Have you been playing fantasy roles for so long in your life that you have now utterly failed to be capable of recognizing reality? What the hell is the matter with you?

A melancholy expose' to place subtle hints of nostalgia to the notion of destroying things and killing people?

When you first became an actor and made it to the big screen, I'll bet you thought that was enough. But as the years have passed and you constantly watch to see if your candle might go out, you have to repeatedly re-invent yourself to impress...well....who, exactly?

I liked your movies, starting with "The Sting" and "The Great Waldo Pepper" and "The Natural". Three great films that should be enough for anyone with aspirations to be recognized as a great actor. Yet, that's not enough, is it?

Your ego has now taken over and you think you know how life SHOULD be, rather than recognizing how life really IS. But you are an ACTOR. You get paid to pretend you're someone else; Someone who is an alteration of yourself; A fake, a phony, a fabrication, and even an "interpretation".

Siding with such people as Ayers makes me want to destroy every movie of yours that I own. So who are you trying to impress now? At least half the country thinks of you as a typical liberal twit and generally not very bright.